Johnny Mee and Photo of Athy Social Club Players

One of the great pleasures of writing a weekly article such as “Eye on the Past” is the many unsolicited but welcome letters which arrive in the post.  Sometimes contact is made in person, nearly always so, when the caller is an overseas visitor looking for background information on members of a family long gone or forgotten.  Occasionally the contact is by telephone and one such phone call a few weeks ago came from Salthill, Galway resident Johnny Mee.  A retired bank official, Johnny lived and worked in Athy in the early 1950’s and while here he was a member of the Social Club in St. John’s Lane. 

As a club, its heyday was the 1940’s and on into the 1950’s and during its relatively short life it co-existed with another local club, the C.Y.M.S.  The Social Club had its premises in the former Comrade’s Hall, as the British Legion Hall was once called, in St. John’s Lane, while the C.Y.M.S. (Catholic Young Men’s Society) held sway in its own premises at the corner of Stanhope Street and Stanhope Place.  Both premises are now gone, the C.Y.M.S. Hall having succumbed to the might of the wreckers ball and chain so that its site could be included as part of the site for St. Michael’s new Parish Church.  The Social Club hall on the other hand had a life long after the Social Club ceased to function and even became, for a short period, the home of the dislocated C.Y.M.S.

The two clubs catered for different types of members.  The C.Y.M.S. with a history going back nearly 100 years was a working mans club.  The Social Club had a membership which probably saw itself in a somewhat different light but there was another more fundamental difference between the two clubs.  The Social Club had male and female members, while the C.Y.M.S. had an all male membership which in a way was to be expected because of its links with the male dominated Catholic Church. 

I was reminded of the C.Y.M.S. and of the Social Club of the 1950’s when Johnny Mee sent me from Salthill a photograph of some members of the Social Club taken in 1951.  They were cast members of the play, “The White Headed Boy” which was put on in St. John’s Hall in November of that year.  The photograph shows standing at the back 5^th from left the tall figure of a young Johnny Mee.  The others in the photograph in the front from left are Jo Lawler, her sister Florrie, Chrissie Burke, Paddy Flynn, Nellie Fox, Frances Fenlon and Claire Moore.  At the back, again starting from the left, are Tadgh Brennan, May Fenelon, Tommy Walsh, Tom Fleming, Johnny Mee, Pat Mulhall, Kitty McLoughlin and Tommy Doyle.

Photographs are a wonderful record of the past, giving us as they do an opportunity to gain a glimpse of life as it was.  Many of the happy faces captured by the camera lens of 54 years ago are gone to their eternal reward, but many of us can still recall the names and the personalities of those distant days.

Eye on the Past 727

The first play I ever saw was “The Barretts of Wimpole Street”. I was eleven years of age when my eldest brother Jack brought me to the Town Hall to see the Social Club Players in Rudy Bestier's classic. What is now the main library room was then the local theatre cum dance hall and while the stage presentation of 53 years ago is almost lost to me I can still recall, for whatever reason, the appearance on stage of May Fenelon. I can't recall any of the other players who that night took part in the play, the action for which was centered on Elizabeth Barretts bed sitting room at 50 Wimpole Street in London.

I was reminded of this when on Thursday night last I slipped in, somewhat late I have to admit, to watch the cast of “My Father's Life” perform in John MacKenna's latest work. The performance was in the exhibition room next door to the main library room and of necessity because of the absence of an elevated stage the play was enacted in the round.

John MacKenna, one of the founders of the Mend & Makedo Theatre Company, has long championed for a theatre/arts centre for Athy and more than anyone else he has kept alive the theatrical flame in the town of Athy which was once a vibrant centre for the dramatic arts. The Social Club Players of the 1950's and early 1960's were the most successful successors to a long line of amateur theatrical companies which graced the stage in this part of Kildare over many decades. What was important for the success of these groups is that they had a stage on which to perform. In earlier years the Comrades Hall in St. John's Lane vied with the Town Hall as a venue for amateur theatrics, and I remember both venues being used at different times by the Social Club Players. Today Athy does not have a theatre, big, small or otherwise and the public spaces available for cultural events in the Heritage Centre or the exhibition room of the Town Hall are not so suitable for dramatic productions.

Despite this the Mend & Makedo production of “My Father's Life” was a first rate performance which drew a remarkably warm response from a small but receptive audience last Thursday. I was particularly struck by the performance of Sarah Maher, a young actress who brought a wholesome sweetness to her portrayal of the daughter of the English peasant poet, John Clare. She was particularly good when interacting with the other players, her measured assurance of movement, expression and voice belying her relatively short experience as a stage actress. She was less convincing when adopting the narrative role, especially in the first part of the play. The conversational tone she adopted at times seemed hurried and perhaps too casual, but as the play progressed this improved so that by the plays end she had the audience enthralled. A good performance, indeed an excellent performance by a young girl whom I believe has a great future in theatre. As usual I can't give a compliment without a little gripe and it is this. Her last line as she left the stage I felt was unusually flat.

Noel Lambe was good in the role which was particularly suited for him. His performance relied more on visual expression of the writer's intentions rather than a recital of lines and for this Noel was ideal. Strangely I thought that the author of the play gave a performance which was not one of his best. I have seen John in all his plays going back almost 25 years and he has never failed to excel in the many challenging roles he has undertaken in the past. The Northamptonshire accent he adopted for his role of John Clare was by and large maintained through the play at the level which was credible, but somehow or other his portrayal of the mad poet did not quite come off. The tortured visage of an institutionalised lunatic could not be visualised as I looked at the face of the man I know so well. It was a good performance, but not a great one. The reason I think lay in the difficulties presented by the physicality of the actor playing the part of a man who spent so many years in a lunatic asylum. It's possible that the fault may not be the actors but rather my own for retaining a visual representation of how I believed an early 19th century English asylum inmate would look.

All round it was a fine performance by the Mend & Makedo players in an original play by one of our finest writers. John MacKenna's literary output is impressive and in November his new book “Things you Should Know” will be published. I gather the book will be launched in the Town Hall on Saturday, 4th November by radio and T.V. personality Derek Mooney, but more about that nearer the event. In the meantime you should try and see “My Father's Life” which is being toured throughout Leinster over the next few weeks.

Earlier on Thursday I travelled to Dublin for the launch of Zolton Zinn Collis' book “Final Witness – My Journey from the Holocaust to Ireland”. Zolton featured in an Eye on the Past I wrote some years ago and in the meantime he has been one of those responsible for organising the Holocaust Memorial Day which is held in January each year. Intended to cherish the memory of all the victims of the Nazi Holocaust the Memorial service organised in association with the Department of Justice and Dublin City Council serves as a reminder of the dangers of racism and seeks to provide lessons from the past that are relevant today. Zolton has for many years gone from school to school talking to young people about the tragic defining episode of the 20th century in which he lost so many members of his own family. His is a sad story but one he says that must be remembered and never forgotten. With the publication of his book the story will now be available to a wider audience. It is a story with which we should make ourselves familiar if we are ever to aspire to freeing ourselves of the evils of prejudice, and accept the part we have to play in fighting racism and other forms of discrimination.

The book launch took place in Dubrays book shop in Grafton Street and the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, on a busy political day took time out to perform the launch. It was nice to see many from Athy who took the trouble to travel to Dublin to support Zolton and those of you who did not have that opportunity will be pleased to know that Zolton will give a talk in the Town Hall in the near future. Further details will be given in this column. In the meantime the book is on sale at €13.99 and I would recommend it as an important testament of a courageous man.

I finish this article with a few lines from a poem written by John Clare in his latter years. They are the words of a simple countryman, the son of a labourer who himself worked as a farm labourer, whose tombstone at Helpston which I visited a few years ago bears the epitaph “A poet is born not made”.

“I lost the love of Heaven above
I spurned the lust of Earth below,
I felt the sweets of fancied love
And Hell itself my only foe.

I lost Earth's joys, but felt the glow
Of Heaven's fame abound in me
Till loveliness and I did grow
The bard of Immortality.”

Eye on the Past 738

Jo Lawler passed away last week. A quiet unassuming lady Jo was in her younger days a member of the Social Club Players and featured in many of the plays put on in the Town Hall and the Social Club in St. John's Lane in the 1940's and 1950's. Looking back at some old programmes I find that Jo played the part of Mabel Scally in Brinsley McNamara's “Look at the Heffernans” in March 1945. With her in that play were Ger Moriarty, Liam Ryan, Tadgh Brennan, Agnes Doyle, Paddy Flynn, Freddie Moore, Ken Reynolds, D.S. Walsh, Sheila McEvoy, Betty May and Maureen Purcell.

Jack McGowran of The Abbey Theatre directed “They Got What They Wanted”, a comedy by Louis Dalton in which Jo Lawler featured in a production put on in Athy in 1948. The 1951 production of Lennox Robinson's play, “The Whiteheaded Boy” again had Jo Lawler in one of the roles where she was joined by her sister Florrie. The play which I think may have been successful in that year's Irish Amateur Dramatics Festival was directed by another well known theatrical figure, P.J. O'Connor of Gate and Gaiety Theatre Productions.

Jo continued to appear with the Social Club Players up to at least 1959 and the programme for that year shows that she played the part of Mrs. Lee in “The Turn of The Wheel”, a play written by local playwright, Dorothy Mullen. In the intervening years Jo featured in “The Country Boy”, “Twenty Years a Growing”, “My Wife's Family”, “The Devil came from Dublin” and “The Far Off Hills”. There were many other plays in which Jo Lawler featured but unfortunately I don't have the relevant programmes.

Was Jo, I wonder, the last surviving member of the Social Club Players? It's a question I cannot answer with any degree of certainty but I'm sure some of my readers will give me the answer.

Jo was a sister of the late Jack Lawler who worked as a Law Clerk for Barry Donnelly. Jack whom I knew quite well was one of the most saintly men I have ever been privileged to meet. Innate goodness permeated his every word and deed and his death was a sad loss for his sister Jo with whom he lived in the Lawler family home in St. Martin's Terrace.

Jo in her latter years lived a quiet life and those who met her knew little, if anything, of her involvement in the local theatre of 50 and 60 years ago. In a way Jo's long life brings home to us the way in which each younger generation have little or no knowledge of what happened or who was involved in events of previous generations.

It's sad to think that this should be so and raises yet again the desirability of having an oral history project geared at recording the life stories of the men and women who by dint of age and experience have fascinating stories to pass on. It's a subject I will come back to again.

One man who would have benefited enormously from proper records being kept phoned me during the week. Living in Dublin and now retired, he is trying to get information on Mary Deevey who lived at 89 Woodstock Street, Athy in the 1940's. If anyone can give me information on Mary or her relations my caller from Dublin would be extremely grateful.

The local Photographic Society has produced an extremely good calendar for the coming year. It features twelve photographs of local scenes, including a very colourful Offaly Street captured on film on what appears to have been a good summers day. The Offaly Street of my day could not boast of such colours as found in Jack Brogan's lovely photograph, for as I remember the houses in those days were cloaked in nothing but grey cement, aged and weathered. It's a wonderful calendar and one which will give enormous pleasure and bring back memories for Athy people living away from their home town. I gather the local Scouts group have also produced a calendar but I have not seen it yet but I'm sure it is worthy of your support in this the twenty fifth year of the scout movement in Athy.

With Christmas approaching I am reminded, as I am every year at this time, of the Wren Boys lead by Johnny Lynch of Shrewleen Lane who played through the streets of Athy every St. Stephen's Day up to the mid 1960's. They were continuing a tradition that went back many years and every St. Stephen's Day when I was living in Offaly Street various Wren Boys made their appearances as they went from door to door “singing the wren”. Sadly it's a tradition which has died out but this year the Wren Boys tradition will be revived when the Gym Club, Gaisce Group, comprising 15 or 16 young people take to the streets on St. Stephen's Day. They are all members of Athy's Gym Club with which Aidan McHugh, formerly of St. Michael's Terrace, is involved and they have been practising for some months past in preparation for this years post Christmas festivities. They will start at St. Vincent's Hospital on St. Stephen's morning at about 11 o'clock and from there they intend to visit all the “older” districts of Athy up to approximately 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So if you live in Pairc Bhride, St. Joseph's Terrace, McDonnell Drive or St. Patrick's Avenue and in any of the intermediate areas be ready to greet the Wren Boys (and girls) on St. Stephen's Day. I gather they will also visit a few of the public houses later that evening.

I am finishing off this Eye on the Past with a photograph taken of the 1950 production by the Social Club Players of Paul Vincent Carroll's play, “The White Steed”. The Players captured on stage are from left to right: John Dolan, Joe Martin, Tadgh Brennan, Jo Lawler, Tommy Walsh, May Fenelon, Ken Reynolds, Liam Ryan, Florrie Lawler, Nellie Fox, Christy Burke, Tom Fox and Jim O'Doherty.

To all my readers I extend a Happy Christmas and every good wish for the New Year.

You take the high road, I’ll take the low road

WHEN 2007 finally ran out, two men long associated with the town of Athy had also reached the end of their life spans. Frank Anderson, the bearer of a noble clan name from Scotland, was indeed a descendant of a Scottish immigrant family from Perthshire.

The Andersons, with the Frasers, Duthies, Duncans, Campbells, Hosies, Neills, Pennycooks and nine other Scottish families, came to Ireland in or around 1851 on the invitation of the Duke of Leinster to take up vacant farms in South Kildare. An interesting tradition associated with the Duncans, Campbells, Hosies and the Andersons related to me some years ago by Frank Anderson, had the four families drawing lots to decide on which side of the River Barrow they would settle. The Duncans and Campbells remained on the East Side, their fellow Scotsmen crossed the River Barrow.

Frank Anderson was for many years a member and an officer of Athy’s Rugby Club and carried on an Anderson family tradition when he became club captain in 1949/50. The club was founded in the 1880s and among the founding members was R Anderson, who I believe was Robert Anderson of Castlemitchell, an ancestor of the late Frank. Indeed, the Anderson family has figured large in the annals of Athy Rugby Club, with Frank’s father Robert H Anderson as club captain from 1929 to 1931 and Frank as club president in 1967/68.

His brother Leslie occupied the same presidential position on several occasions from 1972 onwards. The Anderson family connection with the club was cemented with the presentation of the Anderson Cup in 1970 for competition between provincial third teams. Frank Anderson, who played junior inter-provincial rugby with Leinster, helped compile with the late Des McHugh, the centenary history of Athy Rugby Club, which for reasons not yet made clear was celebrated in 1980. Frank, who was a member of the dwindling Presbyterian community in Athy, will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

On Christmas Eve, my school friend Noel Scully died after a short illness. Noel, a well-liked figure in the town, was the subject of an Eye in this series early in the year (Eye on the Past no 747). Noel recalled the hardships of the early 1950s and the difficulties he had to overcome to become apprenticed to the butchers’ trade.

He had left school even before the school leaving age of 14 years had been reached and endured hardship and many disappointments before he overcame the disadvantages of economically depressed times to succeed in business. He took great pride in his trade and enjoyment in the pursuit of success on the dogracing track. And success did come his way courtesy of a wonderful greyhound named ‘Dilly don’t Dally’, who gave Noel many important wins as a dog breeder and owner.

I had left the town council before Noel was elected as an urban councillor so had no first-hand experience of dealing with him across the council chamber. However, it was clear from his public utterances that he worked assiduously to promote the town and nowhere was this seen to better effect than in the town twinning ceremony which he presided over during his year as chairman of Athy Town Council. A modest quiet man, Noel was universally liked, not only by his own townspeople but also by those with whom he came in contact, as was evidenced by the impressive attendance of Labour Party national politicians at his funeral. Our sympathies go to Noel’s widow and family and to the family of the late Frank Anderson.

Christmas is a time for giving and receiving and this year there was a huge Taaffe family surprise with the unexpected arrival home for the holidays of my youngest daughter Carol. She travelled from China to spend a few days in Athy and it was a smashing surprise and undoubtedly the finest gift I could have expected this Christmas.

One other surprise that gave me enormous pleasure was the unexpected gift of papers given to me by Catherine Harrington in the car park of Pettitt’s over the Christmas holidays. It contained a photo of the Athy Social Club Players in April 1958 with the Fr Matthew Cup. The young lady sitting second from the right on the front row was tragically to die in a road traffic accident the following year. Mary Harrington with her friend Breda Kennedy were killed while walking on the Dublin Road near Geraldine Park. Also in that envelope were a number of programmes of the Athy Social Club Players dating from 1953, several of which were signed “Mary Harrington, PO House”.

They were obviously Mary’s own copies of some of the plays in which she took part, the earliest of which was the 1953 production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. This coincidentally was the very first play I saw and it was the 1953 production in the town hall to which my brother Jack brought me over 50 years ago. The next year Mary Harrington featured in The Righteous are Bold, followed in 1955 with a part in Mary Mullan’s play The Clock Ticks Dusk. Later in the same year Mary played Trixie Trevelyn in John McCann’s play Twenty Years A-Wooing.

The final programme for 1956 was for My Wife’s Family, where Mary Harrington again joined on stage a host of Social Club Players, including my secondary school teacher Paddy O’Riordan.

The photograph which was given to me I am reproducing without naming the actors/actresses other than Mary Harrington as there are three persons in the group whom I cannot positively identify. A copy of volume 3 of Eye on Athy’s Past to the first person to give me all the correct names of the Social Club Players of 1958, together with the name of the play which won for them the Fr Matthew Cup that year. A happy New Year to all my readers.

Mary Mullan - writer

I remember the first night of "The Clock Ticks Dusk". A play in three acts by local author Mary Mullan it was put on by Athy Social Club Players in St. John's Hall in 1955. I was a young fellow just out of short trousers and being allowed to get out of the house after dark was in itself a treat. Young as I was the thrill of seeing a local person's play produced on stage was something noteworthy. Of the Social Club plays I saw over the years only "The Clock Ticks Dusk" and the earlier production in the Town Hall of "The Barretts of Wimpole Street" are all that I can recall with certainty.

Mary Mullan whose house is in the beautiful countryside adjoining Brackna Wood was the daughter of Willie and Catherine Fennin who lived on the family farm originally purchased by Willie's father, Tim Fennin, in 1858. Mary attended St. Mary's, Athy, then a private senior school operated by the Sisters of Mercy where the requirements of a liberal education did not necessitate the sitting of State examinations. Classes consisted of no more than 4 or 5 pupils. The Sisters of Mercy provided the entire teaching staff which included Sister Claire, the School Principal, who taught History and Geography, Sister Beuchmans who taught French, Sr. Joseph, the English teacher and Sr. Ursula, the Irish teacher.

When Mary Fennin decided to attend University she found to her dismay that Latin, a subject she had not studied, was an essential requirement for Matriculation. Undaunted she contacted Brother Dolan of the local Christian Brothers School who gave her grinds for five weeks after which she successfully met the entry requirements for University College Dublin.

When she got her Arts Degree with First Class Honours in Languages at nineteen years of age she was the youngest Arts graduate for many years. Obtaining a teaching post in Loretto College, St. Stephen's Green, Dublin she remained there for a number of years. It was while there that she met her future husband Dermot Mullan from Dungannon, Co. Tyrone. Marrying in 1945 she later returned to the family farm at Brackna on the death of her father.

Mary who had short stories and poetry published over many years continued her literary work while her children were growing up. Through her husband's involvement in the Castlemitchell Players and later the Social Club Players in Athy she became interested in drama. Her first play "The Clock Ticks Dust" was premiered on the 25th of April, 1955 and published the same year with many subsequent performances by amateur groups throughout the country. The original cast of the play produced by Ken Reynolds included Frances Fenlon, Sheila Lynch, Seamus Finnerty, Dermot Mullan, Nellie Fox, Patsy O'Neill, Mary Harrington and Tommy Walsh. A sequel "Where There Is Smoke" also written by Mary Mullan was performed by the Social Club Players in 1957.

Mary, whose husband Dermot has since died, began teaching in St. Brigid's School, Athy, in 1961 where initially she took night classes in French. Later appointed to a full-time post she taught French, English and Irish until her retirement two years ago. She still writes as she says "whenever the spirit moves me" but nowadays she is no longer producing work for the stage having reverted to her favoured medium, poetry.

As she sits at her writing desk she is faced by a portrait of her grandfather, Tim Fennin, the first member of the Fennin family to live at Brackna. His portrait painted in oils by Mr. Webber of Kellyville House links the present literary occupant of Brackna House with another literary person of that area Rev. Thomas Kelly, a former owner of Kellyville House. Looking out across the wood I am reminded of another literary connection. It was here that Patrick O'Kelly formerly of Kilcoo and author of "1798 Rebellion" and translator of Abbe Geoghegan's 'History of Ireland' and then a Captain in the United Irishmen assembled his men prior to a planned attack on Athy during the 1798 Rebellion.

Such are the connections made as I sat and talked to Mary Mullan last April and as she took down a treasured memento of her first play's production in Athy on the 25th of April, 1955 I marvelled at the coincidence that thirty nine years to the day after the curtain had been raised on "The Clock Ticks Dusk" she was sharing her memories with me in her house on the edge of Brackna Wood.

Ger Moriarty

He first came to Athy in 1934 with M.G. Nolan who was opening a new drapery shop in Duke Street. Coming from Sheerans Drapery in Mountrath where he had been apprenticed after a Christian Brothers education in Mullingar Ger Moriarty was completing a journey which had first started in Lisscannor, Co. Clare. Born in that West Clare village his family settled in Ballinaleck, Co. Westmeath after his father resigned from the RIC in 1921.

Apprenticed to a general drapery in Mountrath in the late 1920's he lived in with no pay for two and a half years. Indeed for that apprenticeship he paid the shop owner £50, a huge sum in the 1920's from which you can gauge how highly prized drapery apprenticeships were in those postwar days. When he came out of his time he received a wage of £18 a year and as he says himself he felt like a millionaire. The hours were long with the shop opening at 8.30 a.m. and closing at 7.00 p.m. except on a Saturday when it was a 10.00 p.m. finish.

Next door was Nolans drapery shop of Mountrath and when M.G. Nolan decided to buy Jacksons shop in Duke Street, Athy, for his new drapery business he asked Ger to join him. M.G. Nolans which was to become an institution in the town was a general drapery with ladies wear upstairs. Initially the staff consisted of M.G., Ger and Kitty Nolan who was later to leave and be replaced by a Miss Hall and Mary Walton. Tommy Walsh later joined the staff as indeed did local girl Mary Harrington who with her friend, Breda Kennedy, died tragically in a traffic accident on the Dublin Road in 1959.

Ger remembers his former boss and friend M.G. with affection. He describes him as a man willing to help everyone and anyone but who as a salesman would be incapable of selling ice cream in hell. M.G. served for many years as a County Councillor and an Urban Councillor and was the father figure of the Fianna Fail party in Athy during the 1950's and the 1960's. Ger, very soon after his arrival in Athy, got involved with the Social Club players. In the early 1930's the Club had premises on the Carlow road where the tennis courts were located and at St. John's hall which they had acquired from the British Legion. With Bill Ryan, Tadgh Brennan, Tommy Walsh, Ken Reynolds, David Walsh, Paddy Flynn, Florrie and Jo Lawler, Kitty McLoughlin, Freddie and Molly Moore, May and Francis Fenlon and others, Ger spent many happy years with the Social Club players, an amateur drama group of considerable talent and skill.

The male members of the Club did not confine their socialising to the hall in St. John's Lane but over time found that they were repairing to the back room of Mulhall's public house adjoining Whites Castle. There they met on a few nights a week but especially on Friday nights when the affairs of State and town were discussed and analysed at length, good conversation and debate prevailing. Ger recalls the local curate who although a non-drinker always sat on a stool in the corner each Friday soaking in the atmosphere while enjoying the convivial surroundings and the craic.

Marrying a local girl, Lottie Brophy, daughter of a local publican in 1944 Ger continued working in M.G. Nolans for 30 years. He was a member of the local LDF during the second World War with local publican Tom Flood of Leinster Street in charge. Other officers of the LDF included Tim McCarthy of St. Patrick's Avenue, Norman Plewman and John Stafford then living in Emily Square. Stories of wartime escapades and Tom Flood's baby Ford car are recounted with relish and no doubt relief that not a single shot was fired in anger. However there was an occasion when a firearm was accidentally discharged in the local Garda barracks in Duke Street which then served as the headquarters of the LDF causing consternation amongst the ranks and no little concern as to how the incident could pass unnoticed by the superior officers. Apparently that difficulty was got over.

Ger opened his own drapery business in 1964 after acquiring a premises in Leinster Street from Mrs. Blanchfield. He retired from the business in 1992 and spends his well earned leisure in listening to music, a past-time which he shares with his son, Gerard, who is a teacher in Dublin. His daughter Fionnola is a nurse in London. 83 years of age on the 2nd of June Ger is a familiar figure at Ceoltas sessions in Clancys each Thursday night.